May 20, 2013 -- International Viewpoint -- The situation of the "lefts" in Europe cannot be understood
without starting from the crisis, its multiple dimensions and its
effects on the social and political field. Hitting head-on all the
organisations and parties linked to the history of the workers’
movement, precipitating ruptures, it obliges political forces to
recompose around new axes.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the
collapse of the Soviet bloc announced a new era: the current upheavals
give this era its content. The present crisis is global: in economic
terms, it is the consequence of an over-accumulation of capital, an
overproduction of goods and commodities and an under-consumption of the
masses. The “real economy” of the imperialist centres is settling into a
long-term recessive logic, and none of the "orthodox" economic experts
ventures onto the theme of a "way out of the crisis”.

The comparison is often made between the present crisis
and that of 1929. The latter led to fascism and World War II. For the
moment, the current crisis is being contained. Some people have used the
expression “the crisis of the 1930s in slow motion”. But today’s crisis
has a double singularity, as a “crisis of civilisation”, especially in
its ecological dimension, and as an expression of a “tilting of the
world”. The centres of gravity of the economy and world politics are
shifting. The crisis struck the capitalist societies of the centre and
their immediate periphery, while countries such as China and India, and
others in Asia, are experiencing a lasting expansion. To a lesser
extent, some Latin American countries are experiencing a long phase of
growth. This lasting crisis of capitalism -- the third of such magnitude
after those of 1857 and 1929 -- is likely to put an end to the domination
of Europe over the world, and to a whole historical period.

These changes are not conjunctural but structural. They affect all
the economic, social and ecological equilibriums in the world. And this
is in a situation where capitalist globalisation has left its mark in
every part of the world. So the austerity plans affecting Europe today
are not the umpteenth austerity plans that the continent has
experienced: under the present effects of international capitalist
competition and of the more and more direct pressure of a unified world
market of the labour force, it is the place of the European continent
that is being challenged. Capitalist globalisation demands that Europe,
the weakest link in the system, if it wants to secure its place in
global competition, must break what remains of its "model".

The ruling classes and the financial markets are aiming at the
reduction of the purchasing power of the working classes by 15 to 20 per
cent, if not more in the south of Europe, at the destruction of public
services, at blowing the labour code to pieces. Everywhere in Europe,
the counter-reforms, in particular those concerning the labour market,
are going in the same direction: more flexibility and more
precariousness. The brutality of these austerity policies is even
greater in that it results from the diverse trajectories of different
economic zones of the European Union: Germany and its satellite states, France,
Italy, southern Europe, eastern Europe. These contradictions are even
stronger in that there is not, unlike the United States or China, a
central state.

In the global concert, Europe combines economic decline and political
weakness. The tensions, the internal contradictions, the risk of
implosion exist in several traditional political formations in Europe.
This translates into a full-scale attack on rights and democratic
freedoms. “Pro-austerity” tendencies reinforce the authoritarian traits
of the regimes in place. This “democratic” crisis plays directly into
the hands of fascist or far-right populist parties. We can no longer
rule out that, under the pressure of the crisis, there will emerge
alliances or political reorganisations promoting reconciliation between
the right and the far right.

The policies of the Troika -- the European Union, the European Central Bank and
the International Monetary Fund -- and of the financial markets override the decisions of the
institutions of classical parliamentary democracy. With the crisis of
the nation-state and parliamentary democracy, the traditional parties
are caught up in a turmoil that has undermined their social and
political bases. The political earthquake that has just hit Italy is a
good demonstration. Berlusconi’s right lost more than 7 million
votes. The left lost 4.7 million votes. The organisations linked to
ex-Communist Refoundation collapsed. And up popped Beppe Grillo and his 8
million votes – the expression of people being fed up with austerity,
with corruption, with the European Union, but also of a leader with
problematic political positions with regard to the trade unions and the
rights of immigrants and whose trajectory is difficult to predict.

The historical crisis of the European workers’ movement

How, under these conditions, could the "lefts" not be impacted?
During the first months of the crisis, around 2008, it was hoped that
the crisis would cause reactions, large-scale social struggles and the
strengthening of the workers’ movement. Five years later, it is another
scenario that has been written. There has been and there is resistance
and social struggles. Southern Europe -- first of all Greece, with its eight
one-day general strikes, but also Portugal and in an impressive way
Spain -- with its indignados, its strikes and demonstrations --
have experienced an upsurge of struggles.

Radical forces have obtained
good electoral results in Greece with Syriza, an exceptional phenomenon,
and to a lesser extent in Spain and France, with Izquierda Unida (United Left) and
the Left Front (Front de Gauche). But this reality can also express itself in a movement
such as Grillo's "Five Stars" in Italy.

However, in none of the countries of
Europe has a significant blow been delivered against the attacks of the
governments and the employers, despite exceptional struggles in southern
Europe. Moreover, these struggles are not producing a phase of organic
growth of the workers’ movement: there are no massive waves of people
joining parties or trade unions.

No reformist, left reformist, anti-liberal or revolutionary current
has experienced substantial growth, except in Greece, with a
large number of recruits to Syriza which, despite weaknesses in its
implantation and organisation, had at its last national conference
nearly 35,000 members. But in general the rate of unionisation continues
to decline, after declining significantly in the 1980s and 1990s. Only
IG Metall maintains its position in Germany.

As for the parties, they
are experiencing a steady erosion of their members, and in the best of
cases tend increasingly to be reduced to big electoral machines. Even
the powerful German Social Democracy has dropped from a million members
in the 1970s to less than 500,000 members. And almost nothing remains of
the great Italian Communist Party!

A party like the Communist Party of France (PCF), which has contained its crisis following the
election results of the Left Front, has seen a significant drop in its
membership. The number of members went down from 78,779 to 64,184
between the last two congresses. The number of members who voted for the
last congress (February, 2013) was 34,000, whereas 48,000 voted to
choose their candidate for the presidential election in June 2011.
"34,000 is the lowest figure in recent years", noted Roger Martelli,
historian of the PCF and himself a former member of the party.

So there
is a singular situation, which combines one of the deepest crises of the
capitalist system and a very much weakened European workers’ movement.
This is a notable difference with other crisis situations and in
particular the 1930s, when all organisations and currents experienced
impressive growth, on both the political and the trade-union level.

'Already no longer and not yet'

This weakening of the workers’ movement has deep causes. It is
firstly the result of 30 years of neoliberal capitalist offensive
that has unravelled, dismantled and then liquidated a series of social
achievements. The crisis comes at a time when the workers’ movement has
for years been thrown onto the defensive. The changes that have been
made to work processes have been shaped by these unfavourable
relationships of forces. While the working class has never been as big
(between 85 and 90 per cent of the active population), it is segmented,
divided, individualised and in significant proportions engaged in
precarious work. This undoubtedly inhibits the development of class
consciousness and of trade unions or working-class political
organisations.

Finally, even in the countries of southern Europe which
demonstrate great fighting spirit, there is a very considerable lag
between social explosions and socialist consciousness. The absence of an
alternative puts a brake on any project of revolutionary socialist
transformation.

These discrepancies exist in other regions of the world, as for
example in the Arab world which is today destabilised by the outbreak of
revolutions for democracy and social justice. Dictatorships have been
overthrown by the popular classes and by coalitions bringing together
democrats, secularists, nationalists, religious people and
revolutionaries. The revolutionary processes are continuing, but as
shown by the developments of the situation in Tunisia and Egypt, the
dominant political forces come from the Islamist movement, even though
it is diverse and divided. If, as Gilbert Achcar explains, "We have to
go through the experience of Islamism in power", that does not explain
the weakness of the progressive and revolutionary currents today. The
balance sheets of the Arab nationalism of the 1950 and '60s and of
Stalinism on the international level weigh painfully on the formation of
socialist consciousness.

To come back to Europe, the propulsive force of its workers’ movement
strengthened parallel to the expansion of capitalist Europe, even
though the workers’ movement was controlled by the bureaucracies of
Stalinism and social democracy. Europe’s decline on the socioeconomic
level has been accompanied by cultural and political weakening; it
reduces the influence of the workers’ movement on the continent.

Of
course, some counter-tendencies offset these declines: social resistance
to the attacks by capital, new social movements such as the global
justice movement, the indignados and new radical currents among
youth. New socio-political experiences which block austerity policies
can cause sharp turns in Europe, as evidenced, for example, by Syriza in
Greece.

From a geopolitical point of view, the potential of the workers’
movement and of social movements is considerable in the new emerging
powers, especially China. The social weight of the Chinese proletariat,
its progress in the fight for wage increases, social security, its
ability to build trade unions, associations for democratic rights,
independent political movements can play a key role in a reorganisation
of the lefts.

In a situation where the traditional workers’ movement
"is already no longer", as long as new movements – the young indignant
ones and Chinese and Indian workers and those of other countries in
Asia and Latin America "are not yet’, what is most promising about
the new epoch keeps us waiting.

At the same time, capital is scoring
points. We must therefore be lucid about the reality of the global
relationships of forces, and in order to resist, know how to defend a
political project able to respond to sharp turns in the situation.

A social democracy that is 'more and more bourgeois and less and less working-class'

The evolution of social democracy is a good indicator of the
tendencies in the situation. The crisis of the 1930s occurred in a
context of a rising dynamic of the workers’ movement after the Russian
Revolution of 1917, and the crisis itself caused a radicalisation of the
working classes and their organisations. All the currents of the
workers’ movement, from the reformists to the revolutionaries, polarised
millions of workers. Coupled with the rise of fascism, the crisis
pushed the big battalions of social democracy to the left, leading
significant sectors of it towards more radical positions.

Today, the movement of social democracy is in the opposite direction:
the more the crisis deepens, the more social democracy adapts to
neoliberal capitalism. How can we explain this transformation? Some
people thought that, under the effects of the crisis, sectors of the
ruling classes, and following in their traces the parties of the
Socialist International in Europe, would move towards Keynesian or
neo-Keynesian policies of stimulating demand, of stronger public
intervention. On the contrary, the social-democratic parties have continued with
austerity policies, and sometimes even initiated them, as in southern
Europe and in France today.

No ruling class or state has taken up
Keynesian policies or those based on social compromises. On the
contrary, these sectors are using the crisis to increase the rate of
exploitation and of surplus value. Intercapitalist competition is
leading to a forced march to lower the standard of living of millions of
people.

But beyond the economic trends, there is a political problem:
the choice of Keynesianism is the product of relationships of forces
imposed by class struggles. It was the Russian Revolution, the impact of
the struggles of the 1930s and those of the post-war period and the
1960s that imposed such policies on the bourgeoisie and on states.

Today, the deterioration of the relationship of forces to the
detriment of the popular classes in no way forces those at the top to
make political concessions or social compromises. On the contrary, they
redouble their attacks by imposing austerity and they dictate this
policy to their social-democratic "lieutenants". From PASOK in Greece to
other social-democratic parties in southern Europe, and involving the whole of
the Socialist International, there reign policies of submission to debt,
of respect for the "golden rule" of budgetary austerity, of defence of
the interests of the employers.

This process of adaptation is also due
to a growing integration of social democracy into state institutions,
and of the upper layers of these parties into the milieux of the
financial markets and of captains of industry. The arrival of someone
like Strauss-Kahn to head the IMF illustrates this process. Lenin, in
his time, defined the Socialist International parties as “bourgeois workers'” parties.
These parties are now "less and less workers’ and more and more
bourgeois". They remain linked, by their historical origin, to the
workers’ movement, but their links with their social and political base
are more and more weakened.

Each party has its history and the differences are significant
between, on the one hand, the ties that unite German social democracy to
the workers’ movement and, on the other hand, the more distant links
of the French Socialist Party with the workers’ movement. But, overall,
their relationships with the popular movement are increasingly weak,
undermined by their support for austerity policies.

Some have
experienced a massive loss of members, as in Germany in the 1990s, while
others, such as PASOK in Greece, can suffer a collapse or, as in Spain,
confront crises that endanger their existence. This qualitative change,
if it was taken to its conclusion, would transform these parties into
“Democrat parties on the American model”. This is the type of
transformation that has been experienced, not by a social-democratic
party but by the Communist Party of Italy, which has become a bourgeois
centre-left party.

This trajectory can be slowed down because of the
necessities of alternation in government, which encourages these parties
not to be bourgeois parties like the others. In countries where the
history of the workers’ movement remains alive and where social
democracy is still strong, the latter can only play a key role in
political life and in political institutions because it is
"social democratic". This is the reason for the maintenance of
historical references, although the Socialist International parties of the beginning
of the 21st century no longer have much to do with those of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Spaces and limits of the radical left

This shift to the right of social democracy has released a space for
the forces to the left of the social-democratic parties. In the past months,
forces such as the Left Front in France, Izquierda Unida in Spain and
Syriza have occupied it. The left reformist forces have even succeeded
in winning back a substantial part of the electorate of the
anti-capitalist or revolutionary left, especially in France.

Indeed, the
space occupied by the "radical left" results more from the rightward
evolution of social-democratic parties and the crisis of European political
representation than from an advance of the mass movement and the
political radicalisation of sectors of society, except in Greece with
the experience of Syriza.

A phenomenon like that of Beppe Grillo has
also drawn in not only voters for the radical left but also voters from
the left and the right. The spaces occupied by Grillo and Syriza may
overlap, but the Five-Star movement is not Syriza, far from it. In the
one case, beyond the aspirations of the citizens who have identified
with Grillo, which must be taken into account, we are dealing with a
movement whose positions are problematic; in the case of Syriza, we have
a political movement of the radical left.

In a situation marked by resistance but also by defeats, parties
(such as the Communist parties) which have a better social implantation
and positions in the trade unions or in representative institutions are
more resistant and represent a more credible alternative than the
anti-capitalist forces (except in Greece where the Communist Party [KKE], a party that is
very Stalinist and divisive, has isolated itself, even though it
continues to have militant forces). But the electoral rebound of these
parties is not accompanied by a corresponding organisational and
political strengthening, which takes us back to the degradation of the
global relationships of political forces.

But the crisis also changes the relationships between
social-liberalism and the Communist parties. The latter are prey to new
contradictions between, on the one hand, interests linked to the
alliances forged between social-democratic and Communist leaders, and on the
other hand, the austerity policies endorsed or implemented by the
social-democratic parties, which are of such brutality that they make
joint governmental coalitions more difficult.

In Spain, these
contradictions lead Izquierda Unida to oppose the policies of austerity,
but at the same time to participate in a government with the PSOE in
Andalusia. In Italy, the nebulous ex-Communist Refoundation has lost its
way by remaining subject to the centre-left of the Democratic Party. In
France, the Left Front appears, for popular opinion, to be opposed to
the Socialist Party's President Francois Holland, but what contortions it gets into to avoid stating clearly that
it is part of the left opposition to this government!

How many hesitant
and contradictory votes in parliament on government policies. And it
is no secret to anyone that the PCF will be torn, at the next municipal
elections in 2014, between those who will continue alliances with the
Socialist Party and those who want to be part of the Left Front lists. And
these contradictions will not disappear, even behind good electoral
results.

In France, the Left Party, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has been able,
thanks to its alliance with the PCF, to give real dynamism to the Left
Front. The 4 million who voted for Mélenchon and the tens of
thousands of participants in the meetings during the election campaign
have been a point of support for action and debate against the austerity
policies. But this time once again, this dynamic has not resulted in a
strengthening of the organisations of the Left Front.

In France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon represents, within the spectrum of the
European radical left, the French exception, with his fight for the
“Republic”. In many aspects, he comes across one of the most virulent
against the government’s policies, but he combines his references to the
class struggle with a "nationalist republicanism" that adds to the
confusion of ideas and programs. On the political and historical
level, his reference is not to the Republic of the Communards, who put
the social republic in opposition to the bourgeoisie, but that of the
republicans who merge, in their defense of the Republic, the words
“nation”, “republic” and ’”state”. At the strategic level, this
conception subordinates the "citizens’ revolution" or the "revolution
through the ballot box" to respect for the institutions of the state of
the ruling classes.

However, these references, far from being
ideological coquetry, are not without political implications. Thus,
during the presidential campaign, he reaffirmed in Cahiers de la revue de la Défense nationale
"that in the current situation, nuclear deterrence remains the
essential element of our strategy of protection". Moreover, it is
surprising that a supporter of ecosocialism defends the French nuclear
bomb.

Mali

But it is especially faced with a key political question like the
French intervention in Mali that the conceptions of Mélenchon on the
state and the Republic have consequences. His defence of the Republic
leads him to wonder whether or not "French interests" are or are not
threatened. Although he rejects "any neo-colonial intervention", he
"takes note", in the first place, of the military intervention, then
"wishes for the victory of the French forces in northern Mali”. His
refusal to define François Hollande’s policy as being that of French
imperialism prevents him from demanding the stopping of the bombing and
the withdrawal of French troops from Mali.

Once again, these differences are not without political implications.
The refusal to participate in the Hollande government, some of its
votes in parliament against austerity policies and its support for
social struggles create the conditions for joint action with the Left
Front. But its ambiguities with regard to the Socialist Party parliamentary
majority, the refusal to affirm itself as a left opposition to the government, the institutional links which bind it to the Socialist Party are a brake
on the construction of an alternative. All the more so as the Left Front
is at present controlled by the PCF and Mélenchon, despite a few
dissenting voices that are unable to modify the relationships of forces
within it.

The 'Syriza' singularity

Quite another thing is the Greek configuration. We cannot understand
Syriza without starting from the Greek crisis, which has resulted in
social destruction unprecedented in Europe since the Second World War.
Socioeconomic demolition goes hand in hand with the political
decomposition of the traditional parties, in particular PASOK. At the
same time, the austerity plans of the Troika are massively rejected by
the population. Greece has experienced in recent months eight one-day
general strikes. On the far right, against a background of racism, the
Nazi party "Golden Dawn" is making a breakthrough. In these exceptional
circumstances, those of a "global national crisis," Syriza has been
propelled into being the first party of the Left: its election results
have gone from 4.6 per cent to 26.8 per cent!

Syriza, originally a coalition, has been transformed into a party. It
comes from the history of the Greek left, the crisis of the communist
movement, its splintering: Synaspismos, the majority current, comes from
the Eurocommunist currents of the 1970s and has experienced internal
crises and shifts to the left, notably under the pressure of the younger
generations. Syriza has also worked with the global justice movement.The Communist Party of Greece (KKE), a very Stalinist party, more organised, is outside Syriza.

At
the last national conference of Syriza, the left current and the left
pole presented a separate list that obtained 25 per cent of the votes.
Although the majority of Synaspismos remains on left reformist
positions, the instability of the coalition, its sensitivity to the mass
movement, its capacity of attraction with regard to the anti-austerity
forces, the place of the revolutionary left within it, contribute to
giving Syriza a radical role very different from that of the Left Front
in France.

Syriza’s essential strength and its dynamic come both from its
radical opposition to the memorandums of the Troika (EU, IMF, ECB), its
rejection of austerity policies and, over and above formulas, from its
real defence of a program in favour of social rights, public services,
the annulment of the illegitimate debt, nationalisation of the banks
under social control. In this situation of acute confrontation, these
demands have a transitional role.

Syriza has pursued a policy of unitary
proposals towards the KKE and Antarsya, which have rejected them.
Lastly, it is practically engaged alongside sectors in struggle. Syriza
is the expression of the anti-memorandum movement. It has also
popularised the proposal of a government of the lefts on an
anti-austerity program, whose content is an issue between the left and
the right of the party. Because, to date, it clearly a question of a
"government of the lefts", a government breaking with austerity and not a
"government of national union or salvation", as has been stated here
and there by some leading members of Syriza.

Of course, nothing is settled. Social decomposition is increasing day
by day. The stakes in Syriza are considerable on the level of the
pressure exerted by the EU and the Greek capitalists. The left-reformist
orientation that is dominant within Syriza, and also the gap between
its electoral strength and its organic weaknesses, limits its capacity
for action. The temptations of the Syriza right to seek agreement with
sectors of the ruling classes for a compromise with the EU are real.
Other sectors of the left, outside Syriza, discuss the possibility of a
project of national reconstruction.

But, at this stage, the EU remains
intractable: no salvation outside “the memorandum”! So, faced with the
attacks of the Troika and the Samaras government, there is no other
perspective than confrontation, mobilisation to overthrow this
government, the battle for a "government of the lefts", and creating
from the rejection of the austerity conditions the first breaks with the
capitalist system.

The revolutionary left: a difficult mutation

In the context of the overall political decline that the social
movement is experiencing, the revolutionary lefts have been hit harder.
No doubt there are historical explanations: too marked by the form, the
content and the ideas of the 19th and 20th centuries, they do
not manage to take sufficiently into account the demands of the new
epoch and the need for a fundamental mutation. No doubt, and the NPA is
not the only example in Europe, or even in the world, the
revolutionaries and the anti-capitalists are not succeeding in moving
from the stage of "organisation" to that of "small popular party”. No
doubt there is also a difficulty for organisations that, for decades,
were "against the stream" or "in opposition", to be part of a real
global political alternative experiencing the difficulties of political
action!

These weaknesses did not allow the NPA to take sufficiently into
account the emergence of a force like the Left Front and to adjust a
political tactic that combines unitary proposals and political
struggle. So it suffered a double temptation: adaptation, in the name of
unity, to the dynamic of the Left Front, and sectarian propagandism by
way of politics. This double temptation awaits other anti-capitalist and
revolutionary forces. A detailed balance sheet of the NPA is not the
subject of this article, but the redeployment of the anti-capitalist left implies emerging from this double temptation. This redeployment is
possible because, even in reduced proportions, there is always a social
and political base for anticapitalism.

This implies clarifying three issues:

(1) The question of unity, unity of action of all social, trade union
and political forces for a convergence of struggles against austerity
policies. This is decisive, but it must also be accompanied by a
political united front, building a political alternative against
austerity and, in particular, by an orientation to build a left
opposition to social-liberal governments. In France, this involves
proposals to the Left Front for action, struggle and debates.

(2) The question of an anti-capitalist action program is also
fundamental. How to combine the immediate demands of the ongoing class
struggle, for jobs — the banning of sackings, starting with those made
by companies that make profits; wages, defence of public services and
transitional proposals for a break with the neoliberal capitalist logic:
auditing and annulment of the debt, expropriation of the banks and
constitution of a unified public banking service, nationalisation of key
sectors of the economy under workers’ control; a break with the Fifth
Republic and a constituent process for real social and political
democracy based on social self-management. This program is not a
prerequisite for action. In a situation of exceptional crisis, basic
demands against austerity may have a transitional dynamic towards
breaking the system. Every step forward is support of these demands must
be fully supported.

(3) Finally, the construction of an anti-capitalist force demands
putting forward a political perspective of government based on decisive
tasks against austerity and the neoliberal capitalist logic. “Workers’
government “, “popular government”, “government against austerity”;
those are some general formulas. "Government of the lefts" in Greece,
because the concrete situation calls for a concrete answer. These
formulas are opposed to all policies of participation in or support for
governments that manage the capitalist economy and institutions. In the
present crisis, it is politically important to explain the contours of a
political alternative to social liberalism, showing that there is
nothing inevitable about it.

The political alliances of the radical left are diverse. So are the
experiences. The Left Front is not Syriza. The relationship between the
dynamics of the mass movement and these alliances, as well as the state
of the internal relationships of forces within this or that coalition
are important factors in determining a political tactic. The dynamic of
social struggles and their combination with political crises will be
decisive for the emergence new political generations. It is up to
revolutionaries to learn and to become part of these real movements.

[François Sabado is a member of the executive bureau of the Fourth International and an activist in the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France. He was a long-time member of the national leadership of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR).]